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> Strong responses from T-cells were detected in the subjects, the researchers said. “The mild to moderate course of illness suggests that full vaccination foll

> Strong responses from T-cells were detected in the subjects, the researchers said. “The mild to moderate course of illness suggests that full vaccination followed by a booster dose still provides good protection against severe disease caused by omicron,” they said. So really, nothing new here. The vaccine works, we just like writing headlines that confuse people and generate clicks.

Scoundreller 5y ago
It is a fear mongering headline, but if you’re only preventing severe disease, it’s correct in that it’s not blocking the virus.
- bondarchuk 5y ago
  It's clearly dishonest to use the phrasing "don't block" when they know full well many people will interpret it as "don't work" at a quick glance.
  - h2odragon 5y ago
    Its clearly dishonest to claim that vaccines "work" when you know that most people will read that as "blocks transmission and infection" If that's not enough, change the definition of "vaccines". Surely that should convince everyone! Edit: they did that: Aug 2021: https://web.archive.org/web/20210826113846/https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/imz-basics.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20210826113846/https://www.cdc.g... > Vaccine: A product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease. Today: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/imz-basics.htm https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/imz-basics.htm > Vaccine: A preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - phren0logy 5y ago
      The Salk polio vaccine was about 60-70% effective and is certainly a vaccine. Please don’t confuse your misunderstanding of what a vaccine is with an attempt to change the definition.
      - parkingrift 5y ago
        We're down to 30-40% protection against infection for two dose Pfizer-BioNTech. Is it a vaccine if you need a booster every 6 months the vaccine only protects against severe infection? More important than petty arguments is how this virus was sold to the public. Pfizer-BioNTech suggested 95-100% efficacy after 30 days. Now we're gaslighting people into saying protecting against severe infection was always the goal. https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-detail/pfizer-biontech-announce-positive-topline-results-pivotal https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-deta... https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2034577 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2034577
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        _djo_ 5y ago
        Nope. You’re mixing numbers. Both the trials and independent national studies found vaccines like the Pfizer-BioNTech one to be about 95% effectiveness against severe disease and hospitalisation, not infection. It was never claimed that they’d completely prevent infection. New variants like Beta, Delta, and Omicron have varying levels of escape from both vaccination and prior infection, which means effectiveness at preventing severe disease or hospitalisation against those variants has decreased, requiring a booster. Nor is this unusual, as the flu vaccine also needs to be constantly adjusted to take new variants into account.
        egg1 5y ago
        No, the data from the first clinical trials for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines showed 95% efficacy against symptomatic infection. You had Fauci, Birx and countless other talking heads in the media implying or stating outright that the vaccines conferred sterilizing immunity. Of course, we know now that the variants have evolved some degree of immune escape, that the vaccines no longer prevent infection while still being effective against severe disease, but that's not what the "experts" originally claimed. It's disappointing to see the Hacker News crowd buying into the gaslighting that vaccines are only ever meant to prevent hospitalization. That was not the scientific consensus 2 years ago, and still isn't.
    - VaxWithSex 5y ago
      Will they? I think most people mostly care about themselves, therefore your argument is not sound.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - mortehu 5y ago
      From what I've read, sterilizing immunity from vaccines may simply be a myth, and vaccines thought to have this property don't stand up to scrutiny. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/09/sterilizing-immunity-myth-covid-19-vaccines/620023/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/09/steriliz...
    - msbarnett 5y ago
      > If that's not enough, change the definition of "vaccines" If “vaccine” meant “thing that 100% stops you from ever even getting infected”, most vaccines throughout the history of vaccination wouldn’t meet that definition. But that’s not, and has never been, the definition – so nothing needs to be changed. >> Vaccine: A product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease. That doesn’t mean what you seem to think it means (so-called “sterilizing immunity”). A 20-fold reduction in hospitalization is by any read protecting you from a disease.
      - moralestapia 5y ago
        >If “vaccine” meant “thing that 100% stops you from ever even getting infected” Not taking sides but that's exactly how most people think about vaccines.
        msbarnett 5y ago
        An unsourced “I claim most people have this misunderstanding, therefore the claim that vaccines work must be responsive to this incorrect understanding (plus some vague mishmash of implications about conspiracies to change the definition of vaccination, or something)” doesn’t strike me as a terribly productive line of argument to be honest.
        moralestapia 5y ago
        Hmm ... yeah I'm sorry my HN comments have low ROI.
        typon 5y ago
        Most people have a yearly interaction with the flu vaccine, where it's made perfectly clear that you can still get the flu, but it will be mild and the efficacy is something like 60-80%. (At least this is what my pharmacist has told me every time I get the flu shot)
        5y ago
    - Mordisquitos 5y ago
      > If that's not enough, change the definition of "vaccines". Surely that should convince everyone! Where have you ever seen a definition of the word "vaccine" saying or even implying that it "blocks transmission and infection"?
      - yucky 5y ago
        From above: Aug 2021: https://web.archive.org/web/20210826113846/https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/imz-basics.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20210826113846/https://www.cdc.g... > Vaccine: A product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease. Today: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/imz-basics.htm https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/imz-basics.htm > Vaccine: A preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases. I think this is what people are referring to.
        _djo_ 5y ago
        “Protecting from disease” was always recognised in the medical community as meaning you’d not get the severe symptoms of the disease, not that you could not get infected at all and not pass it onto others. Few, if any, vaccines have blocked infection. They work by preventing the onset of severe disease and usually by severely blunting infectiousness.
        egg1 5y ago
        How exactly do you think we eradicated smallpox and polio?
        _djo_ 5y ago
        Neither vaccine was fully sterilising. In fact current US CDC advice if going to a country with a polio outbreak is to get a booster. In both those cases the vaccines just blunted the transmission rate enough for r0 to drop below 1. We were also lucky that the responsible viruses had very stable mutation rates & no animal reservoirs unlike SARS-CoV-2. That meant they mostly died out over time once the transmission rate was reduced.
    - hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
      Oh yes. This is a good lesson in complexity for the whole society. Instead of a binary works/doesn't work people have learned that there are different kinds of vaccines, that not all vaccines prevent the spread of a disease, that some vaccines need more than one shot to increase efficiency, that vaccinated people can still die from the disease they were vaccinated against, that some vaccines need to be taken seasonally to be effective and so on. (This is from someone who is taking a vaccine orally everyday (that doesn't "block transmission and infection" as it is allergy-related.)
      - peteradio 5y ago
        A vaccine taken daily is so far from the typical associations that it is similar to the insistence by biologists to call a tomato a fruit. How something functions for the practicing human is different from how something functions in that human, the person is more likely to associate how it functions "for" them.
    - pupppet 5y ago
      If I don't get very sick, I'd say they work. The only people moving the goal post are the anti-vaxers. Ok, they reduce the severity of the disease...but..but..but COVID is still spreading so I will write off vaccines entirely.
      - HonestOp001 5y ago
        The CDC is redefining words in front of our eyes, the anti vaxxers are merely pointing this out.
        pupppet 5y ago
        Seems like a prudent move when a certain segment of the population believe the prior definition gives them an excuse to not get vaccinated.
  - itbeho 5y ago
    I wonder why many people would think that? "You're not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations" - Joe Biden https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/22/politics/fact-check-biden-cnn-town-hall-july/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/22/politics/fact-check-biden-cnn...
  - ls15 5y ago
    I would read that as "not preventing infection". Are they preventing infection?
- BurningFrog 5y ago
  It's partially blocking the virus. Summarizing that as "it's not blocking the virus" is misleading.
  - peteradio 5y ago
    The offensive line partially blocked the defense while their QB got sacked.

Scoundreller 5y ago

It is a fear mongering headline, but if you’re only preventing severe disease, it’s correct in that it’s not blocking the virus.

bondarchuk 5y ago
It's clearly dishonest to use the phrasing "don't block" when they know full well many people will interpret it as "don't work" at a quick glance.
- h2odragon 5y ago
  Its clearly dishonest to claim that vaccines "work" when you know that most people will read that as "blocks transmission and infection" If that's not enough, change the definition of "vaccines". Surely that should convince everyone! Edit: they did that: Aug 2021: https://web.archive.org/web/20210826113846/https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/imz-basics.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20210826113846/https://www.cdc.g... > Vaccine: A product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease. Today: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/imz-basics.htm https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/imz-basics.htm > Vaccine: A preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - phren0logy 5y ago
    The Salk polio vaccine was about 60-70% effective and is certainly a vaccine. Please don’t confuse your misunderstanding of what a vaccine is with an attempt to change the definition.
    - parkingrift 5y ago
      We're down to 30-40% protection against infection for two dose Pfizer-BioNTech. Is it a vaccine if you need a booster every 6 months the vaccine only protects against severe infection? More important than petty arguments is how this virus was sold to the public. Pfizer-BioNTech suggested 95-100% efficacy after 30 days. Now we're gaslighting people into saying protecting against severe infection was always the goal. https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-detail/pfizer-biontech-announce-positive-topline-results-pivotal https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-deta... https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2034577 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2034577
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - _djo_ 5y ago
        Nope. You’re mixing numbers. Both the trials and independent national studies found vaccines like the Pfizer-BioNTech one to be about 95% effectiveness against severe disease and hospitalisation, not infection. It was never claimed that they’d completely prevent infection. New variants like Beta, Delta, and Omicron have varying levels of escape from both vaccination and prior infection, which means effectiveness at preventing severe disease or hospitalisation against those variants has decreased, requiring a booster. Nor is this unusual, as the flu vaccine also needs to be constantly adjusted to take new variants into account.
        egg1 5y ago
        No, the data from the first clinical trials for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines showed 95% efficacy against symptomatic infection. You had Fauci, Birx and countless other talking heads in the media implying or stating outright that the vaccines conferred sterilizing immunity. Of course, we know now that the variants have evolved some degree of immune escape, that the vaccines no longer prevent infection while still being effective against severe disease, but that's not what the "experts" originally claimed. It's disappointing to see the Hacker News crowd buying into the gaslighting that vaccines are only ever meant to prevent hospitalization. That was not the scientific consensus 2 years ago, and still isn't.
  - VaxWithSex 5y ago
    Will they? I think most people mostly care about themselves, therefore your argument is not sound.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - mortehu 5y ago
    From what I've read, sterilizing immunity from vaccines may simply be a myth, and vaccines thought to have this property don't stand up to scrutiny. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/09/sterilizing-immunity-myth-covid-19-vaccines/620023/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/09/steriliz...
  - msbarnett 5y ago
    > If that's not enough, change the definition of "vaccines" If “vaccine” meant “thing that 100% stops you from ever even getting infected”, most vaccines throughout the history of vaccination wouldn’t meet that definition. But that’s not, and has never been, the definition – so nothing needs to be changed. >> Vaccine: A product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease. That doesn’t mean what you seem to think it means (so-called “sterilizing immunity”). A 20-fold reduction in hospitalization is by any read protecting you from a disease.
    - moralestapia 5y ago
      >If “vaccine” meant “thing that 100% stops you from ever even getting infected” Not taking sides but that's exactly how most people think about vaccines.
      - msbarnett 5y ago
        An unsourced “I claim most people have this misunderstanding, therefore the claim that vaccines work must be responsive to this incorrect understanding (plus some vague mishmash of implications about conspiracies to change the definition of vaccination, or something)” doesn’t strike me as a terribly productive line of argument to be honest.
        moralestapia 5y ago
        Hmm ... yeah I'm sorry my HN comments have low ROI.
      - typon 5y ago
        Most people have a yearly interaction with the flu vaccine, where it's made perfectly clear that you can still get the flu, but it will be mild and the efficacy is something like 60-80%. (At least this is what my pharmacist has told me every time I get the flu shot)
        5y ago
  - Mordisquitos 5y ago
    > If that's not enough, change the definition of "vaccines". Surely that should convince everyone! Where have you ever seen a definition of the word "vaccine" saying or even implying that it "blocks transmission and infection"?
    - yucky 5y ago
      From above: Aug 2021: https://web.archive.org/web/20210826113846/https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/imz-basics.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20210826113846/https://www.cdc.g... > Vaccine: A product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease. Today: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/imz-basics.htm https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/imz-basics.htm > Vaccine: A preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases. I think this is what people are referring to.
      - _djo_ 5y ago
        “Protecting from disease” was always recognised in the medical community as meaning you’d not get the severe symptoms of the disease, not that you could not get infected at all and not pass it onto others. Few, if any, vaccines have blocked infection. They work by preventing the onset of severe disease and usually by severely blunting infectiousness.
        egg1 5y ago
        How exactly do you think we eradicated smallpox and polio?
        _djo_ 5y ago
        Neither vaccine was fully sterilising. In fact current US CDC advice if going to a country with a polio outbreak is to get a booster. In both those cases the vaccines just blunted the transmission rate enough for r0 to drop below 1. We were also lucky that the responsible viruses had very stable mutation rates & no animal reservoirs unlike SARS-CoV-2. That meant they mostly died out over time once the transmission rate was reduced.
  - hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
    Oh yes. This is a good lesson in complexity for the whole society. Instead of a binary works/doesn't work people have learned that there are different kinds of vaccines, that not all vaccines prevent the spread of a disease, that some vaccines need more than one shot to increase efficiency, that vaccinated people can still die from the disease they were vaccinated against, that some vaccines need to be taken seasonally to be effective and so on. (This is from someone who is taking a vaccine orally everyday (that doesn't "block transmission and infection" as it is allergy-related.)
    - peteradio 5y ago
      A vaccine taken daily is so far from the typical associations that it is similar to the insistence by biologists to call a tomato a fruit. How something functions for the practicing human is different from how something functions in that human, the person is more likely to associate how it functions "for" them.
  - pupppet 5y ago
    If I don't get very sick, I'd say they work. The only people moving the goal post are the anti-vaxers. Ok, they reduce the severity of the disease...but..but..but COVID is still spreading so I will write off vaccines entirely.
    - HonestOp001 5y ago
      The CDC is redefining words in front of our eyes, the anti vaxxers are merely pointing this out.
      - pupppet 5y ago
        Seems like a prudent move when a certain segment of the population believe the prior definition gives them an excuse to not get vaccinated.
- itbeho 5y ago
  I wonder why many people would think that? "You're not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations" - Joe Biden https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/22/politics/fact-check-biden-cnn-town-hall-july/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/22/politics/fact-check-biden-cnn...
- ls15 5y ago
  I would read that as "not preventing infection". Are they preventing infection?
BurningFrog 5y ago
It's partially blocking the virus. Summarizing that as "it's not blocking the virus" is misleading.
- peteradio 5y ago
  The offensive line partially blocked the defense while their QB got sacked.